Small Business Owners Are Not Your ATM: A Message to the SBA

Posted: September 15, 2025 – 4:30 PM

Dear Small Business Administration,

I know you think we're just numbers on a spreadsheet. Delinquent accounts to be processed. Recovery targets to be met. Metrics to be optimized. But I need you to understand something: we are human beings who trusted you with our livelihoods, and you betrayed that trust in the most spectacular way possible.

We didn't ask for a pandemic. We didn't ask to have our businesses shut down by government order. We didn't ask to be thrown into the chaos of your relief programs, where criminals got funded in days and legitimate owners waited months. We just wanted to survive. And you made that nearly impossible.

The Faces Behind the Numbers

Let me tell you about some of the people you're currently hunting down for collection.

There's Maria in Chicago, who ran a catering business for 22 years. She took an EIDL loan to keep paying her employees when events got cancelled. The business couldn't recover because people stopped having large gatherings. Now you're garnishing her Social Security at 67 years old.

There's James in Phoenix, a veteran who opened an auto repair shop with his VA benefits. He used his EIDL to cover rent during the lockdowns. When the economy shifted and inflation crushed his margins, he couldn't make the payments. You're about to seize his tax refund, which he was counting on for his daughter's college.

There's Sandra in Atlanta, a single mom who ran an Etsy shop selling handmade jewelry. She got an EIDL because the SBA told her she qualified. She used it exactly as instructed. Two years later, you sent her a letter saying she was never eligible and demanding repayment with interest. Her credit score is now 520.

    These aren't fraudsters. These aren't criminals. These are Americans who believed their government would help them, and got crushed instead.

    

What We Actually Needed

You know what we needed from you? Competence. Basic, functional competence. We needed you to have systems that could tell the difference between a legitimate business and a shell company. We needed you to process applications in weeks, not months. We needed you to give clear guidance that didn't change every Tuesday. We needed you to actually try.

Instead, you gave us chaos, then blamed us for drowning in it.

You funded billions in fraud because you couldn't be bothered to check. You delayed legitimate applications until businesses died. You changed the rules mid-stream and then punished people for not following rules that didn't exist when they applied. And now you're coming after the survivors with the full power of the federal government.

We Won't Forget

This isn't over. You might think you can bury this disaster under enough collection letters and Treasury Offsets. You might think that eventually the outrage will fade and you can go back to business as usual. But you're wrong.

We're documenting everything. We're building communities. We're supporting each other. And we're making sure that no one forgets what you did. The SBA's failure during COVID won't be a footnote in history. It'll be the case study in every class about government dysfunction for generations.

You're not helping small businesses. You never were. And until you admit that and fundamentally change, we'll be here, exposing every lie, documenting every failure, and making sure the world knows exactly what you are.

Sincerely,
Every small business owner you screwed over